The Smiler....coming soon!

Bottletop is delighted to be working with Alton Towers Resort on video and animation for its new experience 'The Smiler' opening in Spring 2013. This follows the success of Bottletop's work on Nemesis Sub-Terra in 2012. Watch this space for more details...

Brand identity refresh for Integrex

We were pleased to be asked by Integrex to design a new website and an array of printed materials in time for their appearance at the BETT Show at the end of January at ExCel. Bottletop has been working with the forty-year-old Derbyshire engineering business since 2009 when the team designed a new logo, corporate identity and website. Integrex has continued to develop new products and re-focus its position in the market place meaning that a brand refresh and new website were on the cards for 2013. Bottletop organised a photo and video shoot at Scene Photography to create a library of visual assets featuring Integrex's interactive special needs products and corporate AV systems. The images were used in the production of brochures, flyers and short videos as well as on the new website - all designed by Bottletop. Web build was by Juno Media with project management by Bottletop. Despite a tight deadline everything was ready on time for the show in London on January 30th.

University of Cambridge ESOL Centenary

Bottletop was delighted to be asked by the University of Cambridge ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) Examinations to create a film to celebrate their centenary. The final animation uses visual and audio assets from the archive to describe a timeline of events covering the last one hundred years and ties in with the simultaneous publication of a centenary book. The film will be shown at events and conferences as well as on the ESOL website.

BAFTA for Share a Story

CITV's Share a Story won the BAFTA for the Short Form category at last night's children's BAFTA awards. Bottletop is delighted to be part of the Share a Story team, creating two of the 8 winning animations for this year. The picture shows the CITV team collecting the BAFTA from Olympic rower Helen Stanning. Photography credit: BAFTA/ Richard Kendal

Share a Story nominated for BAFTA

CITV's Share A Story strand has been nominated for a BAFTA in this year's children's awards in the Short Form category. Bottletop has produced two of the eight animations for this year's popular children's competition. Telling the stories of Jack the Astronaut and Operation Jelly the animations are now on air.

Behind the scenes with Share a Story

Bottletop has just delivered two of the prize winning Share a Story animations to CITV which will be on air after Christmas. We had a film crew from CITV here yesterday as part of the behind the scenes programme they are making to show children how their original storyboards are developed and transformed into moving images. See one of last year's Share a Story animations here.

The Politics Show for BBC

Bottletop is delighted to be part of the team winning the tender to cover the East Midlands opt-out for the BBC's Politics Show. Headed up by Rob Pittam (ex-Working Lunch), the tender will run for the next three years and will involve Bottletop in graphics and editing.

Bottletop featured in Televisual

The team was chuffed to get a mention in this month's Televisual magazine (July 2012) which features our work for Nemesis Sub-Terra at Alton Towers Resort.

CITV Share-a-Story 2012

Bottletop is looking forward to working on animations for two of the prize winners of CITV's children's animation competition, Share-a-Story. We were asked to be on the judging panel, to pick the winners, alongside other animators who will be producing some of the other winning ideas. More information can be found here.

Die Gadget Show

Bottletop has been asked to provide the titles and graphics for the German format of The Gadget Show.
'Die Gadget Show' will air later in the year (in Germany, obviously!).

A visit to Cambridge

Bottletop is delighted to be working with Cambridge Assessment on a series of animations for The University of Cambridge ESOL (English Speakers of Other Languages) Examinations.

The Gadget Show World Tour

The Gadget Show returns to our screens on April 23rd ( on Channel 5 and 5HD at 8pm) in a new format which has been filmed on locations around the world including Japan and the west coast of the USA. Bottletop has created new titles and graphics for the show in HD - our sixth series for the Gadget Show since we first re-branded the programme back in early 2005. On Monday April 16th at 9pm there is a promo airing.

Nemesis Sub-Terra opens at Alton Towers

Bottletop has been working feverishly behind the scenes on Alton Towers' latest attraction. The new ride called Nemesis Sub-Terra opens on Saturday March 24th and is the first ever theme park ride to be given an official age rating by the British Board of Film Classification, assessing an attraction other than a film for the first time in its 100 year history.

The Bottletop team has created all of the videos for the queue line and within the ride itself. Using a combination of filming and animation the videos were delivered against exacting standards and a tight deadline but were enormous fun to produce.

Monday's Metro newspaper reported that Murray Perkins, Senior Examiner at the BBFC said: 'We are seeing a real blur of the old boundaries of visual content and physical experience in both 3D and 4D cinema, and at theme parks. It contains some intense moments, in some respects comparable with scary scenes which may be experienced in horror or science fiction films. While some people will no doubt find this a frightening experience, the personnel monitoring the site are soon on hand to guide the public to safety'.

The resort said it will enforce the age limit, saying: 'The classification is important for the resort to ensure the wellbeing of our guests. Alton Towers Resort prides itself on offering a variety of rides for all ages and we hope that those under the age of 12 will continue to enjoy our other attractions.' 

Thrill seekers will also be able to leave the ride via a 'chicken exit' if they find the experience too frightening.

We will post some pictures just as soon as we can.

http://www.altontowers.com/

What we've been up to....

We have been doing some fun filming the last couple of weeks for a big theme park project we have in the pipeline. Filming locations have included some caves underneath a well known Nottingham pub as well as a green screen studio. Some of the Bottletops have had to get dressed up for the occasion - which they enjoyed immensely as you can see..... We hope to be able to post an update soon.

February already....

We have been extremely busy in the first few weeks of the year with some really exciting projects getting the green light. Currently we are working on a project for a major theme park which we can't tell you about yet - it's all top secret. So far we have been filming in various locations and also doing some green screen for compositing later.

CITV have commissioned us to produce three more animations featuring famous people from history and we are also working on new titles for the next series of The Gadget Show which is back on air in April.

Happy Christmas!

Hope you all have a great Christmas and New Year -
Get our Christmas Broadcast here!

Share a Story Special

Take a look behind the scenes at our animation work in 'Share a Story Special' on children's channel CITV on 23rd December at 3.45pm, or on ITV1 on the 29th December at 7.25am (unlikely, let's face it) or CITV at 3.45 on 4th January 2012.

CITV - Share A Story

Bottletop was delighted to be asked by children's channel CITV to animate one of this year's Share A Story winning films. The eight winning storyboards were chosen to be animated by different companies across the UK with each child recording the voice over for their own story. See Alice Brumwell's story of Greta The Greedy Witch here animated by Bottletop. The animations are being shown on CITV over the next couple of weeks.

Science Museum films go live

Following our tender win to work with the Science Museum we were delighted to see some of the films go live on the new digital signage system last week. The system allows visitors to gain an overview of what there is to see within the museum including the films shown in the IMAX cinema and in the two 4D experience theatres. We have edited existing IMAX and HD footage, adding animation and graphics. We are also shooting new footage within the museum to give visitors a taster of the different galleries, the shop and the cafes. All of the films are being produced in landscape and portrait format. Work continues until the end of November. Bottletop also got a (small but perfectly formed) mention in Design Week.

Show Off!

Bottletop will be at Antenna's Show Off event on Monday 19th September. Come and say hello, find out what we do and have a go at winning our splendid competition........